The Hotel

Three days before we were to leave for Los Angeles, we received an e-mail from the hotel chain where we had reservations for free nights (because we had points from my husband's work travel) stating that the hotel was no longer a part of the _________________chain and that we should contact the current management to see if they would honor our reservations.

Well, no they wouldn't. But they would give us a special rate. Our daughter checked on a site called Yelp to make sure the hotel was a good one, but apparently it was not; one reviewer said that it was dingy and another said he would give it a zero but zero wasn't included as a ratings choice.

Yes, we should have checked this out before we made reservations, but, hey, free is free. (Never again!)

Our daughter found another hotel just a few blocks from her apartment. It was a boutique hotel. How fancy. It was, according to Yelp, being renovated and was a good place to stay, but was not entirely finished. The hotel rooms looked quite nice in the pictures on the website.

They did not look like this:It was a boutique hotel only if boutique means barely bare bones. My husband spoke to Jason, the very nice manager, about how it seemed as if someone had gotten started renovating, and then just stopped. For example, he said, there was no dresser.

Jason said that the designer for the hotel had never designed a hotel before (and you hired him because?) and that the designer's vision was for a very clean, very uncluttered space. The lack of a closet and a dresser means that the room will be anything but uncluttered, with no place for guests to put their things. But Jason did say that other guests had mentioned the lack of a dresser, and that he would get us one by the afternoon. Now that is five star service!

The whole place seemed to have been furnished from IKEA and we chuckled as we pictured a hotel employee with an Allen's wrench muttering as he put together our IKEA dresser. But that's not how things went.

When we returned to our room later in the afternoon, we found this letter:

So we weren't getting a new dresser at all. We were getting one taken from the room of a departing guest. AND, as you can see, it wasn't a dresser - it was a rather small, very wobbly armoire, placed awkwardly in the corner.




The only camping I would consider doing would be at a motel with a black and white TV and this was just a little too close to camping for me. Or maybe a youth hostel. (I'm old. I get to be fussy.)

The room did have:

A rod to hang clothes on
A functioning bathroom
A bathtub, apparently recycled, complete with lots of cigarette burns on the edge
A cup-at-a-time coffee maker
Air conditioning
A recycled door to the hallway; it had many, many holes in it from previous signs mounted to the inside
A television (color)


The room did not have:

A closet
Kleenex
Enough towels
Cups for the coffee from the cup-at-time coffee maker
Cups or glasses for water

As we drove around the area, we noticed other hotels. When I go back to LA, I think I will check those out. Although if the hotel we stayed in is ever really finished, I would give it another try. It was convenient and the staff was very enthusiastic. In an ineffective sort of way.